


Two People In Love

by LieutenantSaavik



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: A Very Very Brief Mention Of Jesus, Christmas Fluff, GETS FLUFFY, M/M, Starts angsty, Synaesthesia, Synesthesia, Touch Aversion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 14:13:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8984485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LieutenantSaavik/pseuds/LieutenantSaavik
Summary: "It’s hard to… to know, to regulate, in a way.” Bucky pushes his arms out from his sides and starts gesturing, trying to do with his hands what his voice stumbles over. “When I’m happy, with you, it’s like all the bad years are different, like they’re weaker.” He looks up at Steve. “Does that make any sense? At all?”Steve nods. “Of course, Buck.”Bucky laces his fingers together, not entirely sure he believes him. “And when it’s bad, when I’m bad, it’s like that’s all there ever is, for me. When I’m sad, it’s like -- it’s not only like I can never be happy, it’s like I've never been happy at all."





	

“Hey Steve?” Bucky comes into the room quietly as a cat, and equally as skittish. “Could we talk, please?”

It’s rare that Bucky actually wants to speak, and Steve looks up at him in surprise, putting down the weekly newspaper. “Of course.”

Bucky smiles, a sort of watered-down grin that’s eighty years from a smile. “Thank you.” 

Steve can tell the words are building in him, eager and reluctant to get out, and he recognizes the emotions in Bucky’s face. It’s the toll that sudden, negative change takes on a person, the unsure steps, the hitching voice, the hidden tears and equally hidden smiles. 

Bucky crosses the room and settles on the couch next to Steve, enough distance away that it’s like another person is sitting between them.  _ And _ , Steve thinks ruefully,  _ that’s not far from the truth. _

Bucky takes a deep breath and starts to speak without preamble, the way he always did when he was young. “When I’m happy, I’m happy, and it’s like what happened…” He stops, gives a wry smile, and shakes his head. “Look, there’s no way I can say it without sounding cheesy and dumb.”

“Go ahead and try,” Steve prompts, scooting a bit farther from him on the couch. He knows Bucky isn’t all that great at physical contact, and he knows from going through post-ice therapy that talking to air is far easier than engaging with a human figure. So he gives Bucky his space.

“Well, it’s hard to… to know, to regulate, in a way.” Bucky pushes his arms out from his sides and starts gesturing, trying to do with his hands what his voice stumbles over. “When I’m happy, with you, it’s like all the bad years are different, like they’re weaker.” He looks up at Steve. “Does that make any sense? At all?”

Steve nods. “Of course, Buck.”

Bucky laces his fingers together, not entirely sure he believes him. “And when it’s bad, when I’m bad, it’s like that’s all there ever is, for me. When I’m sad, it’s like -- it’s not only like I can never be happy, it’s like I've never been happy at all. It’s like a hole, that I keep falling into, because it keeps getting bigger, and when I think I climb out, it just gets me again.” He drops his head into his hands, a sort of soft, resigned anguish written into the lines and planes of his face, of his arm, of his hunched back. “And I don’t know how to get out of it.”

“Is there any way I can help?” Steve asks gently, after letting the silence grow for a few moments.

Bucky shifts and looks up at the ceiling, and it looks like he’s trying not to cry. “I don’t know,” he says. “And maybe that’s the worst part. I don’t know how to help myself. I don’t even know what I need help  _ with _ , since I don’t know how I feel. I’ve never been good at emotions, Stevie; you know that, and you always have. No good at love, or even hating people properly. I knew I was smart in school, and I knew I had the colors, and I knew I loved you, but I never knew  _ me _ . And now, I guess, I never will, huh?”

“The colors,” Steve says. “We can start there, if you like.”

“I got them back,” Bucky says, and it’s the closest to happy he’s been today. “It’s a part of me they couldn’t take, I guess.”

Steve knows he can’t respond to that, so he doesn’t try for a half-assed reply.

“Your voice. When I heard it, it brought some part of me back. It’s like,” he brings his hands up on either side of his head. “Two me’s. Or three, actually. There’s the part of me you knew, Bucky Barnes. And then there’s the Winter Soldier, which they somehow put on top,” he stacks his metal hand on top of his flesh one in the air in front of his face. “And it covered the Bucky part, bleeding into all the corners of my head, and then I lost me. But then there was the third part, and that part was just… watching. Just watching it all happen, watching me change and be covered by  _ that _ , and,” his voice is carefully controlled, as if he’s stating facts. “And it just watched. It didn’t fight it or even accept it. It just removed itself, somehow. And I wasn’t even aware of it.”

“Dissociation,” Steve says, because he knows the feeling of it well. 

Bucky nods. “It’s a good word for what it is, y’know?”

They sit in silence for a bit. Bucky finally starts to speak again. “And then I heard you. And something happened. There was this ripple, here.” He moves his flesh hand up and down slightly, shifting the metal hand on top of it off to the side. “And it was colored brown and grey, with maybe the tiniest orange or pink. And that… that was a color, Steve. It was the color of your voice, and then the watching part, the watching part of my brain recognized you.”

He pulls his metal hand all the way off his flesh one and then snaps it down again, hard enough to turn his skin red. “And then Hydra got me again. No more color, or even the memory of it.” Bucky shakes his head. “And then you came, and your face didn’t do it. I stood face to face with you, miles up, and felt nothing. Isn’t that awful?”

He doesn’t look at Steve, and Steve, hoping it’s the right move, reaches out a hand to Bucky’s shoulder. The muscles there twitch, but Bucky makes no move to remove the hand. “What they did to you, Buck, I can’t even imagine.”

“Then I heard you talk. And I heard myself talk, through you. The Bucky part of me, and you; both of them together. End of the line. I don’t know why they need charms and enchantments to summon demons away. Just remind them of who they used to be.” His voice is almost bitter.

“Did the colors come back then?” Steve asks.

Bucky shakes his head, then nods. “Yes, a bit. And then, of course, the… the whatever it was. Horror.  That’s the word, I guess. Horror. Because when I first came to, I really saw your face, and I saw that there was blood and cuts on it and you were bleeding and it was because of me, because of  _ me _ , and the part of me registering that was the watching part, the weakest part of everything I’ve ever been, and I didn’t do anything. I couldn’t move to save you because inside my head everything was shifting, breaking. I knew change. I could just feel it, everywhere around me, that the time was different, that the world was different, that I was lost, in a way. But all I was looking at was you. It was like the pieces on top fell to the bottom, and like small things grew again. I’m no poet, Steve, but they write about stuff like this. My mind was changing. And the watching part just stared at you. And the Winter Soldier part didn’t hit you. And the Bucky Barnes part was miles away with you already, but so far back I didn’t know.”

This is the longest Bucky has ever spoken about what happened, and Steve just lets him talk.

“So I just held myself there, and I did nothing, and then you fell, and then I went after. And it was hell, Steve. Hell to fall like that again. But I was falling towards you, I guess, and that made all the difference.”

Steve is biting his lip, staring at the cushions of the carpet. “I’m so, so sorry,” he finally manages.

Bucky doesn’t say anything to that, instead leaning his head gently on Steve’s shoulder. “I have you now,” he says instead.

Steve wraps his arms around him, holding him closely. “You do,” he assures him. “I promise you that no matter what happens, I won’t leave you.”

“I said the same thing, once,” says Bucky, remembering in a flash.

“You did?”

“And then, just as I said I’d never leave you, I went away to war.” There’s bitterness in his voice, and loathing, and regret. “I was a  _ fucking idiot _ , Steve. I did take all the stupid with me, to leave you like that.”

“Don’t do it again, okay?” Steve asks, and his voice is pushing, wanting, a dove-grey and familiar brown line rolling over jagged cracks but not quite hiding them. “Please don’t leave me again.”

Bucky nods, and it looks like his face is breaking. “I promise. I promise, Steve, that I’m not going anywhere.”

Then, in one fluid motion, he turns and kisses Steve, lightly at first, waiting to see if he reciprocates.

He does. Steve meets him at every inch, revelling in how close Bucky is and loving him in the way that they finally, freely can. Bucky wraps an arm around the back of his neck and tilts his head backward to kiss him more deeply, clinging tightly to him with his other hand around his back, pressing them as close together as he can. He wraps his legs around Steve’s waist and Steve makes a soft, pink noise low back in his throat, pulling Bucky closer and all the way onto him. His hands pull through his hair and they move together for a moment, lips on lips, close, connected,  _ there _ .

“Remember that one time? When we were kids?” Steve asks, breaking away and searching Bucky’s eyes.

Bucky nods. “I used to think about it all the time. I thought… I thought it didn’t mean anything to you.”

“It meant everything,” says Steve quietly, forcefully, rubbing a thumb along Bucky’s cheekbone and kissing his lips softly again. “You always did.”

“We fit together now,” Bucky says, and he’s right. Abhorrent, terrible things, horrors, have happened, and years have pulled them apart. But now, they’re closer than they were before. They’re about the same height, the same weight, the same size, and they match, like two sides of the same coin. 

“I feel like something made it that way,” he says hesitantly. “We’re the same. We came back together, you know. We… it’s like… I don’t know, Steve!” He’s a bit frustrated now, the words escaping his reach like he’s 8 years old again. “You were always the god-and-holiness one, and didn’t I know it!”

Steve laughs and pulls Bucky down flat down on top of him, kissing his forehead and then looking at the ceiling. “Maybe something did,” he says quietly, thoughtfully, as his hands run over Bucky’s back, and he’s so clearly the same, in that moment, as who he was before the serum, that Bucky almost cries. “Maybe it did, Buck. And maybe it was us. Just us, all along.”

Bucky shifts himself so he’s lying down next to Steve and smiles. He eyes the Christmas tree in the corner and lets his eyes unfocus, watching the tree turn into a triangle of glowing dots, each individual light turning into a miniature sun. “Thank you,” he says to it softly. He’s not talking to the tree, or even to Jesus, but rather to what’s behind those beliefs and customs, if such a thing exists.

Steve watches Bucky watch the tree, soaking in how the light falls on his face and his long, curving eyelashes which, as he watches, flick upward towards him. Bucky’s eyes seem to have been able to catch the glowing lights on the tree, and they seem to glow with a shine of their own. Steve’s breath catches as Bucky moves and kisses him again, a deep, hot kiss, his eyes flickering shut as he closes everything out but the sensation of Steve under him, around him, kissing him back. He moves his hands over Steve, as if re-carving him from marble or granite or whichever rock is most noble, pulling him close, and everywhere, Steve meets him.

“I’m glad,” Bucky remarks, surprisingly frankly, after a long time of nothing but the sounds of two people in love.

“Of what?” Steve’s voice is a low whisper at the base of Bucky’s neck.

“I don’t know,” says Bucky. “It’s gone again. Maybe I’ll find it. Or not. But I’m glad you’re here.”

Steve pulls him down again into another kiss and smiles against his mouth. “Me, too, Bucky. Me, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> With this, I got closer to how I write Bucky as a child, which made me very happy. A very Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to everyone who reads this.


End file.
